Sucker for a Hard Luck Case
by Thaddeus MacChuzzlewit
Summary: It was an unspoken rule that no one had even thought about until Deeks arrived. Really, it was just common sense, but apparently Marty Deeks needed it spelled out.
1. The Spider

2x10, Deliverance. Sam, upon seeing Monty the dog in the gym: "Hetty said you can't bring rescues in here."

* * *

**Sucker for a Hard Luck Case:**

**The Spider**

The signs had been there since the very beginning. But it took the NCIS Office of Special Projects a while to clue in.

It was Deeks' third day back with them, after the undercover LAPD op that had seen their new liaison blown up and subsequently stitched back together by a veterinarian. Kensi still found herself anticipating the moment each morning when she first saw Deeks, and could reassure herself he was really back and safe. Not that the team really cared about their new liaison, since his liaising sucked and he was a total goof and also annoying. But as Hetty had said, he was kind of 'theirs' now, and nobody messed with their stuff.

This morning Kensi was running late. Not _late_ late, but I'll-only-have-time-to-dump-my-purse-and-sit-down late. Hopefully Hetty wouldn't be around to witness her entrance. But as she slipped her ID card back into her pocket and let the last door buzz closed behind her, Kensi saw Deeks coming down the hall towards her, heading back outside. Out of a top secret, undercover government site that took at least a couple minutes of IDing, passwording and scanning to exit and re-enter.

What was he up to?

Deeks had a coffee cup in one hand and a wide grin on as he waved good morning.

Kensi gave him a weird look as he passed, but she absolutely refused to ask what he was doing. It was too early in the day to encourage his antics.

Then she stopped, realising exactly what she had just looked at.

"Deeks?"

He turned back, smiling at her. "Yes, oh lovely partner of mine?"

"You're holding your coffee cup upside down."

"And?"

Kensi frowned. "Why is your coffee cup upside down?"

"Oh." Deeks tapped the bottom of the cup lightly with his free hand. "I caught a spider in the Ops room. Gonna put him outside."

He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, and as he let the door shut behind him, she realised he hadn't even been joking. Kensi chewed on the edge of her lip as she continued on into the bullpen, and then shrugged off the spider rescue as another of his quirks when they received a case a couple minutes later.


	2. The Bird

**Sucker for a Hard Luck Case:**

**The Bird**

It was only couple days later when Hetty sent them out to investigate a Chechen widow that Kensi got a second surprise. She had lost the game of rock, paper, scissors, and they were taking Deeks' car to the suspect's house. That wasn't the surprising part. Kensi was pretty sure he had cheated. But he refused to arm wrestle or play bloody knuckles for the choice.

Deeks opened the passenger door for Kensi with an exaggerated bow, and then hopped out of reach when she tried to elbow him in the gut.

"What was that for?" he whined. "I was being a gentleman."

Kensi slipped into the car and dropped her bag at her feet. "That wasn't 'being a gentleman'. That was making fun of me."

"How would you know? You have no sense of humour, Fern."

"Don't call me that."

"Why not?"

"Because."

Deeks clambered into the driver's seat beside her. "Because what?"

"Because I said so." Kensi wriggled. Something was poking her in the hip. "What am I sitting on? It better not be leftover fast food."

"Aware of your surroundings you should be."

"Really?" Kensi stared at him, digging underneath her with one hand. "You're quoting Yoda at me? He never even said that, anyways."

Deeks shrugged. "Something like that."

She yanked the offending object out from under her leg and stared at it. The small folded envelope of paper was from the Los Angeles Bird Rescue Centre. Below the organization's logo was a case number, species bracket and local phone number.

"Are you adopting a bird?"

Deeks laughed, looking over his shoulder to pull the car out onto the road. "No, no. That's the case file for a bird I just dropped off this morning. He smacked into my neighbour's window, so I took him to the Bird Rescue Centre on the way to work."

Kensi peered at the folder incredulously. "And they gave you a file on him, and everything?"

"So you can check in later and find out how the critter's doing." Deeks explained. "This little guy broke a wing, but I don't have time with work right now to splint it and keep an eye on him."

"You can do that?"

Throwing a glance at her, Deeks frowned. "Of course, haven't you?"

"No."

Deeks looked completely flummoxed. "Well what do you do if you find an injured bird somewhere?"

"Uh. Nothing?" Kensi could feel heat crawling up her cheeks as she tried to defend her answer. "Some other animal will get to eat it for supper. It's survival of the fittest, and all that. Besides, you can probably catch rabies from touching sick birds."

This was apparently one of the few ways to render Deeks speechless.

That was when Kensi decided that conversation regarding small birds was to be avoided at all cost. Seeing her generally peppy partner walk around in a shocked daze for half an hour was a little too creepy to repeat. Apparently birds were his soft spot or something. Birds and spiders.

When Deeks proudly informed the entire team a couple weeks later that 'li'l flyin' Fred' had made a full recovery and was back in the air, Kensi led the team in a synchronised smile-and-nod and figured that was that.

Except it wasn't.


	3. The Cat

**Sucker for a Hard Luck Case:**

**The Cat**

Kensi had told them about the bird.

It was a little odd, but considering the relationship that Sam had with his car, Callen at least was willing to write it off as a weird quirk. If Deeks liked birds, that was his own business. Maybe he'd had a pet budgie as a kid or something.

But it wasn't that long after 'li'l flyin' Fred' regained flight, that there was a further development in the Deeks discovery.

Callen and Sam drifted into their work area early one morning and shared a wry smile when they found their liaising detective was already there, tipped back in his chair with long legs sprawled across his desk. Most of Deeks' upper body had disappeared inside an extra large hoodie, but what hair they could see was even more disheveled than usual.

"How long do you think he's been here?" Sam said.

"Dunno," Callen shrugged. "Do you think we should give him a chance to brush his teeth before Kensi arrives?"

Sam dropped down in his own chair and snorted. "You think he's been here all night? I thought you called that trick."

"As long as he stays off the OSP couch, I don't care."

The quiet conversation set the bundle of Deeks twitching, and a couple seconds later his head came up for air. "Huh? Couch... What?"

Sam and Callen just watched while Deeks tried to get his feet back on the floor without upending his chair and then sat staring at them for a few minutes blinking like a broken traffic light. "Hey. Uh. What time is it?"

"Time to get an alarm clock for your desk, apparently." Sam looked the cop over appraisingly. "Did you spend the night here? What's wrong with your apartment?"

"Uhg." Deeks rubbed a hand over his face and started combing his fingers through his hair absently, making Callen wonder if that was his usual method of hair styling. "I picked up a stray cat on the way home from work last night, and he wouldn't stop howling. My neighbours were getting ticked off, so I figured I'd head over here instead. There was nobody around except the security guards, and that way if we fell asleep I'd still make it to work on time."

Callen had been trying to find an old breakfast burrito in his desk drawers, but he stopped when he heard Deeks' explanation. "Wait. You picked up a stray cat. Like off the street?"

"Yeah." The younger man began to fumble with the zipper on his oversized hoodie. "I think he's an abandoned housecat since he's been declawed, and everything..."

That was when Sam and Callen realised that Deeks' stomach was moving separately from the rest of his body, and no, the detective wasn't pregnant, and probably hadn't gained twenty pounds overnight, so... "But somebody obviously stopped taking care of him because he's really sensitive and he starts crying as soon as I put him down-" Reaching into the confines of his sweatshirt Deeks hauled out a cat and kept talking. "So I just decided, what the heck, why not bring him to work so he doesn't get any more traumatized while I'm out all day!"

The cat was on the small size of things: entirely black with yellow eyeballs that looked like they were going to pop out of his head if he opened them any wider. Deeks had one arm hooked under the animal's armpits, and the other hand supporting its hindquarters. The position made the cat's arms stick straight out with his paws extended like some bizarre feline version of a zombie.

Sam was not a cat person. "Is that thing okay? It doesn't look right."

"No. He's fine. I didn't want to take him to a shelter because they have a really hard time finding people to adopt black cats. It's so stupid, but people are superstitious or they want a cat with more obvious colours and markings." Deeks blinked a few more times and then wobbled to his feet. "Can one of you hold him while I go wash up a bit?"

Callen reached out to take the cat. "You know Hetty's going to throw a fit when she finds out you brought a cat in here. Don't we have rules against that?"

"I'm pretty sure we don't." The cat twisted in Deeks' arms and tried to burrow into the neck of his hoodie. "I would have noticed if it was in all that paperwork Hetty made me sign. It's not like we have a 'guide dog only' sign on the front door."

He finally managed to detach it from his sweater and moved the cat gently to Callen's arms. The animal took one look at Deeks from his changed perch, flattened his ears to his head and began to let out a deep-throated moaning yowl.

"Myeooooooooow. Myeoooooooow. Myeooooooooooooooooow. Myeooooow."

"Darn." Deeks sighed.

"Myeooooooooooooooooooooooooooow."

Sam was actually a little impressed. "Man, does that thing have volume. No wonder your neighbours were angry."

"Give him back to me, Callen. Maybe we can do this another way. Maybe if I sit him on the bathroom counter and keep one hand on him while I brush my teeth with the other he won't freak out." The detective took the cat back and hitched the animal up to flop over his shoulder. The cat immediately stopped crying. "All right then. Send a rescue team if I'm not back in half an hour. I may be bleeding out on the bathroom floor from extreme cat scratches."

Deeks did make it back from the bathroom before Kensi arrived, although the part in his hair ended up pretty lopsided, and Callen and Sam weren't quite willing to point out that there was toothpaste behind his left ear and he may or may not have had deodorant smears on the butt of his pants.

"I'm not even going to ask," was Kensi's response to the new cat companion. "It would be just like you to pick up strays and infect us with fleas at work."

"I don't think you can 'infect' people with an insect," Callen pointed out. "I'm pretty sure that's a disease thing."

"Thank you, Callen." All four agents (and liaising detective) jumped when Hetty seemingly materialized beside their desks. "While the word 'infect' generally refers to disease-producing germs, it can also refer to anything that taints or contaminates in a way that affects quality, character, or condition unfavorably."

Deeks didn't even bother trying to swivel his body so the cat on his shoulder was a little less obvious. They all knew that Hetty was omniscient.

"Detective Deeks?"

Deeks gave her a wobbly smile. "Yes?"

"Can I speak to you in private?"

Everyone else put their heads down and pretended to get very busy at their paperwork.

"Sure, Hetty."

Surprisingly enough, Deeks returned from his walk of doom a few minutes later, with a wide smile and no cat.

"What did she do?" Kensi asked in a hushed tone.

"What happened to the cat?" Callen added, matching her volume.

Deeks plopped down in his chair and gave his neck a good stretch. "Oh, the cat's fine. Hetty knows somebody who knows someone who's looking for a cat. She kinda suggested that I don't bring cats to the OSP anymore, but check it out-!" He dragged a piece of paper out of his pocket and slapped it down on the desk. "She gave me the number of this dude she knows who runs a private cat shelter. He'll find a home for any other strays we pick up!"

Sam put down the papers he was working on and looked up. "Wait a minute. Did I miss something? _Any other strays we pick up?_"


	4. The Rat

**Sucker for a Hard Luck Case:**

**The Rat**

It was getting bad.

Kensi had never had a pet as a kid, and this new experience of finding cat hair all over her clothes was grinding down her patience. Deeks never looked hairy himself, but the fur seemed to migrate with him wherever he went and jump on her at the most inopportune times. Now her special Coach handbag smelled like dog, because she'd left it on the floor of his car for a couple hours. Twice she'd had to stand by while he 'talked' to a dog they passed on the sidewalk. He was taking it too far.

Animals were a hobby: some people gardened, some people kept pets.

If your hobby inconvenienced people or got in the way of your work, you dropped your hobby. Sam didn't search e-bay for car parts while he was at work, and Eric didn't cover the ops table with Dungeon & Dragon cards, or whatever that geek stuff was that he did.

The last straw came on a sunny day about a month after the cat-in-OPS incident.

Kensi hopped up off the last step and closed the basement door behind her. The house was very modern and the open layout left few spaces to really search. "Nothing of interest downstairs. I don't think they used the basement much."

Sam glanced up from the pile of newspaper clippings he and Callen were sifting through on the dining room table. "Not much here yet, either. But I think you should go check upstairs, Kens. Your partner's talking to himself again."

"At least he remembered to turn the comm on this time," Callen muttered.

A tinny voice echoed in their ears.

"I heard that!"

"And your earpiece too. You're on a roll, Deeks."

The detective in question appeared at the head of the stairs, grinning good-naturedly. "Guys, you've got to see who I found!"

"Who?" Kensi frowned. "What do you mean 'who'?"

Deeks turned so they could see what had previously been hidden in the messy ends of his hair. Perched beside his shirt collar was a rat.

A fat black and white rat.

"Deeks! Is that seriously-?"

"That's disgusting, Deeks."

"Put it back already!"

Callen said nothing, but took one look at the rodent and began turning an unusual shade of green. He hated rats. It wasn't like he had a phobia of them or anything. He just happened to be more aware of how nasty they were than most other people. If he abhorred rats more than terrorists, murderers and politicians, it was because they were disgusting and gross and horrible and diseased and vile and vicious and gross, and, and...

"He's a tame rat. They're really intelligent, you know. He even has a collar. It says his name is Mike," Deeks explained cheerily.

Sam took a couple steps forward to position himself between the rat and Callen. "Good for him. Now can you put it away?"

"But our vic doesn't have any friends or family. Who's going to look after Mike?"

"Somebody else," Sam said.

"Does the ASPCA even take rats?" Kensi asked.

Deeks held out his arm and watched Mike run down to the palm of his hand. "Of course they do. But what if nobody adopts him? Couldn't we see if Hetty would let us keep him?"

Callen clapped a hand over his mouth and disappeared in the direction of the bathroom.

"No, she wouldn't let us keep him. A rat in the OSP?" Kensi snapped.

"He already has a cage, guys, with a water dispenser and a running wheel. It's not like it would be very expensive to feed him. I'm sure we spend more on coffee in a week than it would cost to buy food for Mike. Don't you think it would be a good idea?" Deeks offered hesitantly.

Kensi glared at him and snatched up her bag from the dining room table. "Federal agencies don't keep pet rats. They just don't! Gosh Deeks, you sound like a ten year old."

The detective's lower lip began to protrude dangerously far and he placed the rat back up on his shoulder in a protective motion. "Well can I at least take him over there myself? The ASPCA is on the way back to the boathouse, and then I can get Mike's file number and they'll let us know when they've found a home for him."

It was honestly difficult to think of a good reason to say no.

"G doesn't like him." Sam pointed out.

"Kensi doesn't have a problem with him." Deeks blinked at them hopefully. "She's not afraid of anything and he could ride in our car and I'd even keep his cage on my lap!"

Sam glanced back towards the bathroom. "Well, I guess that would get the rat out of the house before G moves on to puking up his stomach lining. Do you mind, Kensi?"

Already heading up the stairs to get Mike's cage, Deeks paused and looked back at the female agent. "Are you scared of rats, too? It hadn't occurred to me, but I guess if you're afraid to-"

"I'm not scared of rats!" Kensi yelled. "Just get the stupid cage and get out to the car before I leave you here with your stupid rat and your stupid hair."

If he had been at all insecure about his hair or his ability to manipulate his partner into doing what he wanted, Deeks might have been offended. But he'd already figured out that Kensi spent much more time than was appropriate staring longingly at the top of his head when she thought he wasn't looking. Girls had a thing for messy hair. It was a proven fact.

It was also a fact that girls liked to take their anger out on things that they had a thing for.

Or something like that.

Whatever. He wasn't worried.

A couple minutes later Deeks was strapping himself into the passenger seat of Kensi's car, Mike and the cage carefully held on his lap.

Kensi pulled out into traffic, a frown securely plastered across her face. "Is this going to be a thing with you?"

Deeks looked at her with confusion. "Is what going to be a thing?"

"Stupid animals."

"What do you mean? I've never brought back an animal from a crime scene before."

Kensi took one hand off the wheel and jabbed it her partner. "Not from a crime scenes. But you're all weird around bugs and animals and birds and stuff."

She waited till they pulled up to a stop light and turned to see the detective staring at her with honest puzzlement. His blue eyes were pressed into a squint under those stupidly adorable fuzzy eyebrows. Nobody had any business having adorable expressive eyebrows when they were as blond as Deeks was. It was stupid. Kensi wondered if they were soft like the curls around his ears. There was that time she had helped him comb some errant chewing gum out of his hair and every time she brushed out a curl it would bounce back like some Shirley Temple/Golden Retriever cross.

"I'm weird about bugs and animals and stuff. What's that supposed to mean? Is this because the dog at that other crime scene wouldn't stop barking at you, and he liked me right away? Because that just means he had good taste, Kensi. It's not my fault that animals hate you."

Kensi pushed her foot down on the gas, tearing her attention away from Deeks. "Animals don't hate me. That dog just liked you because you smell like lunchmeat."

"Oooooh. That hurts, Kens. I have it on good authority that I smell like sea salt and-"

"Wet dog," Kensi interrupted.

Deeks shuffled in his chair to look pointedly out the passenger side window. "Now you're just being mean. I'm not talking to you until we get back to Ops and you get at least two chocolate bars into you. Mikey and I would like to be taken to the ASPCA now, Kensi."

Kensi groaned and glared at the traffic. "So he's Mikey now, is he? And there's nothing weird about you and animals?"

The LAPD detective didn't deign to answer.

* * *

_P.S. I just googled 'famous brand name purse'. Is Coach a realistic fancy purse for Kensi to own?_


End file.
